“We rent homes. We rent cars. We rent movies. Why not rent music? It might be a very good deal. We now have more options than ever for buying music – we can purchase CDs from Web sites and stores and download music from online services,” Maureen Ryan reports for The Chicago Tribune.
Ryan reports, “All that is now fairly routine for many entertainment consumers: You go to a site such as Apple’s iTunes store or the new Napster and pay around 99 cents for an individual song, which you can store and play on your computer, or burn to a CD and transfer to a portable music device a certain number of times.”
“Some legal download services such as Rhapsody or Napster let you buy a subscription for about $10-$15 a month so you can download and listen to thousands of songs on your computer. The catch is, you generally can’t transfer those songs to a music player or put them on a CD unless you pay an additional $1 per track,” Ryan reports. “So, what if you could pay a flat monthly fee to download as many songs as you want and transfer them to your music player – but they’d only be playable for a certain length of time?”
Ryan reports, “Before you dismiss the concept out of hand, consider this: Microsoft is exploring it.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Consider this, Microsoft is exploring it.” Big flippin’ deal, Maureen. Unlike the Joe and Jane Six Packs of the world we don’t believe Microsoft can do no wrong. In fact, about all it seems to be able to do without help is wrong. The last thing Microsoft dreamt up on their own? Microsoft Bob